Goyal calls for resilient supply chains, while Gor stresses fair and reciprocal India-US trade
India is deepening partnerships on critical minerals with multiple countries, including the UK, the European Union, and the United States, at an industry event on automotive components.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry confirmed India's participation in the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) and the Pax Silica initiative as part of efforts to build supply chains resilient to single-country dependency.
The government is working to simplify regulatory processes for high-tech manufacturing to strengthen domestic production capabilities.
Trade agreement negotiations with multiple partners are underway partly to secure preferential access to critical mineral resources.
Separately, the US Embassy in India stated its position that India-US trade should be conducted on fair and reciprocal terms.
Critical Minerals: Definition and India's List
Critical minerals are those essential for economic development and national security, whose supply chains are vulnerable to disruption due to geographic concentration of extraction or processing (often in a single country) and for which no easy substitutes exist. India notified its first official list of critical minerals in 2023.
The government's push for regulatory simplification and international partnerships directly targets closing India's critical mineral processing gap identified by this 2023 classification exercise.
Minerals Security Partnership (MSP)
The Minerals Security Partnership is a US-led, minilateral grouping launched to strengthen critical mineral supply chains among like-minded countries and reduce dependence on any single dominant supplier.
Key Details
- Announced in June 2022 in Toronto; founding members were Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the UK, the US, and the European Commission; Italy joined in February 2023.
- India joined the MSP in June 2023, becoming the only developing-country member at the time, alongside agreeing to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards for mineral development.
- The grouping does not itself fund projects; it coordinates diplomatic and financial support among members for specific mineral projects worldwide.
India's MSP membership is the institutional anchor for the critical-mineral partnerships with the US, UK, and EU referenced at the event, and reflects India's positioning within Western-led supply-chain diversification efforts away from China.
Pax Silica Initiative and India-US Critical Minerals Cooperation
Pax Silica is a US-led plurilateral initiative focused on building secure, trusted supply chains for critical minerals and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware among partner countries, addressing both raw material extraction/processing and downstream semiconductor/AI value chains.
Key Details
- India signed the Pax Silica Declaration at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February 2026; other signatories include the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Israel, the UK, UAE, Qatar, Greece, and Sweden.
- It is distinct from but complementary to the MSP — Pax Silica has a wider technology/AI hardware scope, while the MSP is focused narrowly on mineral supply chains.
- India's contribution is framed around its engineering talent and growing mineral-processing capacity.
The reference to India-US cooperation on critical minerals and high-tech manufacturing regulatory reform builds on this Pax Silica framework, situating bilateral India-US engagement within a broader plurilateral technology-security architecture.
- India notified a list of 30 critical minerals in 2023, following a Ministry of Mines committee constituted in November 2022.
- 24 of these 30 minerals were placed under central government auction authority via the MMDR Amendment Act, 2023 (Part D, First Schedule).
- The Minerals Security Partnership was launched in June 2022 with 11 founding members/entities; India joined in June 2023.
- India signed the Pax Silica Declaration in February 2026 alongside 11 other signatory countries.